The unions will accomplish more still if they succeed in teaching their members to study the condition of industry in England, to respect the action of those workers who do not join associations, and to see clearly that “if men have a right to combine,” they must also “have an equal right to refuse to combine.”

In 1837 the English Corn Laws (S592) virtually shut out the importation of grain from foreign countries.  The population had outgroiwn its food supply, and bread was so dear that even the agricultural laborer cried out.  “I be protected,” said he, “but I be starving.”  The long and bitter fight against the Corn Laws resulted not only in their gradual abolition, 1846, but in the opening of English ports to the products and manufactures of the world.  With the exception of tobacco, wines, spirits, and a few other articles, all imports enter the kingdom free.

But though Great Britain carries out the theory that it is better to make things cheap for the sake of those who buy them, than it is to make them dear for the sake of those who produce them, yet all of the great self-governing English colonies impose protective duties[1] even against British products (S625).  One of the interesting questions suggested by the Queen’s “Diamond Jubilee” (1897) (S607) was whether England’s children in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada would take any steps toward forming a commercial fre-etrade union with the mother country.  More than ten years later that point still remained under discussion (S625).

[1] Except in certain cases, where the colonies, e.g.  Canada, grant preferential duties, or practical free trade, in certain articles exported to the British Isles.

617.  The Small Agricultural Holdings Act; the Agricultural Outlook.

Through the influence of the greatly increased popular vote, which resulted from the Third Reform Act (S600), the farm laborers made themselves felt in the House of Commons.  They secured the passage of the Small Agricultural Holdings Act (1892).  This gave those who worked on the land the privilege of purchasing from one to fifty acres, or of taking it on lease if they preferred.[2] But, notwithstanding the relief granted by this measure, the agricultural problem is to-day one of the most serious England has to solve.  Just as New England now depends in large measure on the West for its food supply, so the British Isles depend in great measure on America for breadstuffs.  Thousands of acres of fertile soil have gone out of cultivation in the eastern half of the island, mainly because the farmers cannot compete with foreign wheat.

[2] The Small Agricultural Holdings Act enables the County Council (S600) to acquire, by voluntary arrangement, suitable land for the purpose of reletting or reselling it to agricultural laborers and men of small means.  Under certain safeguards the Council may advance up to three fourths of the purchase money.